Musings on history, life, popular culture, and art by historian Gareth Russell. All opinions, unless otherwise stated, are either my own or possibly Gabrielle de Polignac's.

Sunday, 18 April 2010

Happy Birthday, Jenny

Yesterday, my beautiful sister Jenny turned 18 and since we're goyam, today we can say "You are a woman."

Jen, it's hard to pick out which memory to write about here and since there's no way I can do our beloved (accurate) impersonations of all the Kardashians one after another, I thought I'd just make a list of 18 of our finest moments: -

1. The time when I was swinging you round by the arms on the beach, got bored and let go (I don't remember this - but Ashleigh assures me it happened.)

2. The time you decided to sing "We are Golden" by Mika into my camera phone in the thickest Malone accent imaginable.

3. The time we baked a White Chocolate Vanilla Cheesecake for Mother's Day

4. The time you and Shane spent 7 hours trying to sew the hole that had been made in our trampoline's safety net - and it was literally the worst sewing in the world. Its mistakes could have been seen from space and I didn't have the heart to tell either of you until several days later.

5. "Hey you guys."

6. That hideous bus trip to Stranraer, when I got such bad cabin fever I head-butted you - for my own amusement.

7. "The Lost Prince"

8. Making Mel tea and toast in our kitchen last night

9. When you were off school for almost two months and we spent literally hours at a time on the sofa watching the "Desperate Housewives" box-set

11. That computer game we got years ago set in Ancient Egypt. You couldn't pronounce the character's name, so you re-named her "Toot-a-loop." Many times at 2 a.m. we'd enter the study to see you frantically clicking the mouse, screaming, "Run, Tootaloop! Run!!"

12. Those videos we made of how everyone in the family looks when they wake up first thing in the morning and then got told off by Mum for "bullying"

13. You seeing the "Eclipse" trailer for "Twilight" for the first time and crying with excitement at hearing Edward Cullen's voice again.... you are a trooper.

14. That AMAZING photograph of us on the rollercoaster in Canada - with Lynsey in the front of the cart squealing with happiness and you and I pulling EXACTLY the same pose of horror mixed with tears mixed with nausea behind her.

15. The photograph of us on the log ride in Canada, which Mum made us go on about four times to get a nice one of the family - she gave up after the fourth go when we still looked like we were about to projectile vomit and die.

16. Our mutual love of napping, interrupted only for you to take one of your 28 daily phone-calls to or from Oscar.

17. The secret trip to Ballymena under the aliases "Constantine Moncreiffe" and "Anastasia Beaverhausen."

18. "Eh.... don't you forget, it was me and Gareth that made up bleh-bleh. You're just a thief. A comedy thief!"

About Me

Gareth Russell is the author of four works of non-fiction, including the critically-acclaimed biography of Queen Catherine Howard, "Young and Damned and Fair", and two novels set in his native Belfast.